


Leitmotif

by FireflyFish



Series: Prompted: A Collection of Might-Have-Beens in a Galaxy Far Far Away [4]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, star wars phantom menance
Genre: F/M, Inspired By Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 16:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflyFish/pseuds/FireflyFish
Summary: Anakin can hear music that no one else can. Some of it is beautiful. Some of it haunting. But his music?His music is terrifying.





	Leitmotif

Anakin knew he was different when his mother couldn’t hear the music. Warm, beautiful, and soft, it soothed him when she wasn’t there to kiss his injuries or protect him from Watto’s brutish nature. The last notes of his song faded away like dying notes of an old lullaby.

He asks her, once, what her music sounds like and she looks at him funny.

“I don’t have any music, Ani. What are you talking about?” his mother squats down in front of him and feels his forehead for a fever and when she finds none, that seems to worry her more. “When do you hear this music?”

Anakin shrugs, his lower lip jutting out, now worried he had scared his mother. He does that sometimes, when he loses his temper or gets too uspet about one of his friends being sold away from their parents. Once he got so upset he gave himself a bloody nose and his mother had to take him to a doctor. 

Watto hadn’t liked that.

“Ani?” His mother’s voice calls him back to the present. “When do you hear this music?”

“You don’t hear it?” Anakin peeks up through his bangs and he knew from the way his mother’s lips were pursed and her brow furrowed that not only did she not hear the music but the fact that he could hear the music was different, strange. Like the light he could feel when he closed his eyes and looked out on the world with his hidden eyes. 

Anakin Skywalker decides that day to never ever tell anyone about the music.

 

* * *

Anakin knew Padme was special when he heard new music for the first time in his life. It was beautiful and haunting, rising and falling like the shifting dunes out in the sea. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up and gives him goosebumps running down his arms and legs. 

He loves the sound of her music, even the scary low parts with strange horns. He clings to the bright strings and the flourish of an instrument he can’t quite place. The dissonance is beautiful, a rich, complex harmony he isn’t quite old enough to understand but he loves all the same. 

When she turns to smile at him, to speak to him, all he can hear are the sweet, clear notes of her voice, mixed in with the trill of that same strange stringed instrument. Maybe it was the sounds that the angels of Iego made. She was certainly beautiful enough to be an angel.

Anakin decides there and then that he was going to fall in love with Padme. How could he not? When her music was so wonderful? 

“Are you an angel?” 

She said she wasn’t, but Anakin knew better. 

He could hear the music of her soul and it told him the truth. Padme was an angel, his angel.

Yes, he would definitely fall in love with her.

 

* * *

“Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Hello.”

The younger Jedi shakes Anakin’s hand and he wants to burst into tears. His music is so sad, so final, so distant and alone. Anakin has only just now gotten used to the melodies and harmonies swirling around Padme and here was this strange man, his blue eyes too sharp and his brow furrowed, a fake but pleasant smile on his face. He seems nice enough, distant and remote, but nice. 

But his music is so horribly, terribly sad. 

Anakin could almost see it, see Obi-Wan, standing alone as the sun goes down. 

Obi-Wan standing alone as the light dies. 

Anakin swears he won’t let that happen.

 

* * *

Anakin learns the music could change on Naboo.

The doors open up to the plasma refinery and that horrible red man with the halo of horns and the world explodes with music, loud, angry and solemn. It drowns out Anakin and Obi-Wan’s music, even Padme’s sweet harmony are drowned out by the pounding rhythm of the Sith Lord. 

It is the music of evil and of the dark and even as Anakin flies away into space, he can still hear bits and pieces of it. Can still hear the music screaming, can hear the voices fighting for dominance over melody. 

Light may have won that battle, but the war had just begun the song promised. 

And as they lay Qui-Gon out for his funeral pyre, Anakin learns the music of death and mourning.

On Naboo Anakin starts to learn the harmony of darkness and he knows what to watch out for.

 

* * *

Anakin first hears his song change, hears that strange repeating trio of beats when he returns to Tatooine but not in time to save his mother. 

The music didn’t come to him until later in the medbay with a missing arm and he doesn’t know what to make of it. It doesn’t sound terribly ominous but then again, it reminds him of the menacing undertones in Padme’s song and Obi-Wan’s. 

And it always seems to be stronger around Chancellor Palpatine.

Palpatine had no music and, in fact, any person who has a song has their melody and harmonies twisted and skewed whenever the Chancellor was around. Even Ahsoka’s. 

And Ahsoka’s theme is so beautiful and sweet, tempered by the drumbeats of war. He could listen to his Padawan’s cheerful harmony for hours, soothed by her bright presence and unfailing faith in him. He is a better person with her at his side. 

Maybe when the Clone Wars are finished he will hear her song without the relentless pounding of war running through it. 

Without hearing that haunting, horrible dark march that is following him around everywhere.

He hears it on the ship when he kills the Mandalorian who is going to blow up the ship. He hears it on Geonosis, on Mortis and Kiros. 

He hears it over Obi-Wan’s casket as it’s lowered into the vaults of the Hallowed Dead.

He hears it on Naboo.

He hears it more and more until it’s all he can hear.

He hates that song. He hates it even more than he hates the war and he hates the Seperatists. 

He just wants to hear his song, to hear Padme, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka’s songs again. Anything other than that horrible, terrible pounding. That relentless, evil marching song, pushing him closer and closer to darkness. 

And then one day, something changes.

Ahsoka is talking quietly to Obi-Wan, no doubt thinking she’s out of earshot from Anakin, who had stayed behind to talk to Palpatine. The Chancellor had insisted and it had taken every bit of Anakin’s control to ignore the music screaming at him, pounding at his heart and lungs, with the harsh, sharp chorus of darkness. 

“Why is it, every time we leave the Chancellor’s office, I feel better?” Ahsoka asked Obi-Wan. “I know I should ask Anakin but… well… Chancellor Palpatine is his friend.”

“I understand your concern,” Obi-Wan frowns, stroking his beard. “Honestly, I feel it too. The air is lighter out here and everything sounds… brighter. I cannot accurately explain it.”

Anakin’s ears perk up at that and he follows after them, trying to listen without being caught. He takes up a spot behind a statue and strains to hear them both.

“You hear it too?” Ahsoka murmurs, looking up at Obi-Wan from under her hood. “I thought it was just me!”

“What do you hear?” Obi-Wan inquires, the two sitting down on the bench they had all agreed to meet at if Anakin was delayed by the Chancellor again. It happens so often it is almost comical. 

“Well… it’s like a march, with these three beats, repeating over and over again,” Ahsoka sighs, shaking her head. “It’s all harsh noises and crashing sounds and whenever we go into the Chancellor’s office it just sounds horrible! Like I’m trapped on the moon of Trandosha again! It makes my skin crawl.”

Anakin’s heart stops when Obi-Wan hums that nightmare tune.

“Is that what it sounds like?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“You are not the only person who can hear it,” Obi-Wan sighs. “It has only gotten stronger as the Clone Wars has gone on. I have asked others if they can hear it and they only give me odd looks, which is saying something coming from me.”

“You’ve heard it? You can hear it too?” Anakin rushes over to them. “That’s my song! You can hear my song!”

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan turn in unison, identical faces of shock gazing back at him.

There is a moment of silence between the three and then the tension breaks and a cacophony of questions and notes and worries and fears pour free.

“That’s your song, Master?”

“That’s not possible! Your song doesn’t sound anything like that!”

“How long have you been able to hear them?”

There is a torrent of questions and then Obi-Wan suggests they retire to some place private, away from prying and judgemental eyes. Anakin offers up Padme’s apartment and surprisingly, Obi-Wan does not bat an eye at his idea. 

Padme is surprised when the trio of Jedi appear at her door but she offers them her living room and dinner and the promise to leave them in peace. She will ask Anakin about it later when they are alone but for now she understands the need to let her friends be, to work through whatever is troubling them alone.

The truth comes out in fits and starts. 

Obi-Wan first heard the music during the duel with Darth Maul and got kicked in the face in a moment of distraction. Ahsoka started to hear the music after meeting Anakin. They exchange notes on who has songs and who does not. 

They all agree Padme’s song is lovely and they take a moment to listen to its faint strains wafting through the doorway. 

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan tell Anakin they started to notice the change to his song after Mortis, although if Obi-Wan is being honest, he has heard those notes before, always a faint and ominous harmony.

Anakin confesses that he doesn’t know how to stop it, how to make it go back to the way things were. Ahsoka wraps her arms around him and promises she won’t leave him, that she’ll stay with him. Anakin holds her tight and promises he won’t let anyone hurt her. Not even himself.

“I heard it before, when you were younger,” Obi-Wan admits, looking off to the side. “It has always been a part of your song but it has grown stronger, more powerful. I… I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to help. I don’t even know what it means.”

“I want to help you, Anakin. I just… I don’t know how. Please, tell me what you need, and I will do it. All you have ever needed to do was ask.”

And in that moment, Anakin can hear a song that isn’t his own. He can hear someone reaching out to him. Ahsoka and Obi-Wan harmonize, his Master and his Padawan, reach out for him, through the Force and through whatever strange connection they have with each other. 

He can hear their songs in his heart and he knows they love him, that they will always be there for him, that his is as much a part of them as they are of him.

“I… I’m afraid…” Anakin whispers and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka listen, the music silent for once.

 

* * *

Anakin knows Palpatine is a Sith Lord when the groaning hum of his song is revealed in the Republic Opera House. He listens carefully to Palpatine’s suggestion and wonders why he knows a Sith legend.

“I heard it Obi-Wan,” Anakin insists over their secret comm, one he made from scratch to ensure it couldn’t be bugged. “I heard the chanting from before only lower and darker. And he told me some Sith legend about Darth Plagueis? Why would he know a Sith legend?”

“I don’t know but don’t go near him until I return,” Obi-Wan says and Anakin can hear his song, faint but strong. “And keep Ahsoka close by. I might also suggest asking Padme to go to Naboo early for the birth.”

Anakin does as his best friend suggests although he spares Ahsoka, sending her off with Padme and a promise to notify him the minute something happens. 

Ahsoka departs with a cheerful wave, a solemn promise to protected Padme and the warm and beautiful harmony of her song and Padme’s, who kisses his cheek and promises to not have the baby before he joins them on Naboo.

 

* * *

Obi-Wan and Anakin confront Darth Sidious to the sounds of the Force screaming, the music loud, furious and surging. The Sith rages and the Jedi push him back. Again and again they crash against each other. 

Light against dark.

Order against chaos.

Harmony against dissonance.

The music stops when Sidious dies and the explosion of the Dark Side knocks them off their feet. 

When they come back around, Anakin knows they’ve won because he can hear the end of Obi-Wan’s song, the end of his song, a sweeping soaring melody that tells them both in no uncertain terms that they have defeated the darkness. 

Anakin’s song is his own again. 

The march of darkness is no more.

As the two warriors walk away, Obi-Wan wraps an arm around his brother and says, “I can only imagine what your children’s songs will sound like.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this tumblr post](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/forcearama/154088592678)


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